ational Endowment for the Arts READER'S GUIDE MuseurriandLibrary CYNTHIA OZICK'S The Shawl Just as you can't grasp anything without an opposable thumb, you can' write anything without the aid of metaphor. Metaphor is the mind's opposable thumb." — CYNTHIA OZICK % Preface No event in modern history has inspired so many books as the Holocaust This monumental atrocity has compelled thousands of writers to reexamine their notions of history, humanity, morality, and even theology. None of these books, however, is quite like Cynthia Ozick's The Shawl — a remarkable feat of fiction which starts in darkest despair and brings us, without simplification or condescension, to a glimmer of redemption. The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to revitalize the role of literary reading in American popular culture. Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, a 2004 NEA report, identified a critical decline in reading for pleasure among American adults.The Big Read aims to address this issue directly by providing citizens with the opportunity to read and discuss a single book within their communities. A great book combines enlightenment with enchantment. It awakens our imagination and enlarges our humanity. It can even offer harrowing insights that somehow console and comfort us. Whether you're a regular reader already or a nonreader making up for lost time, thank you for joining the Big Read. t^dm.^**' Dana Gioia Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts Cynthia Ozick National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ \ TH E 'The most astounding thing was that the most ordinary streetcar, bumping along on the most ordinary trolley tracks, and carrying the most ordinary citizens going from one section of Warsaw to another, ran straight into the place of our misery. Every day, and several times a day, we had these witnesses." — from The Shawl Introduction to the Novella Readers should not be fooled by the slimness of Cynthia Ozick's award- winning book The Shawl (1989). The interlocking short story and novella pack enough punch for a book many times its length. Though set several decades apart and on opposite sides of the Adantic, the two sections describe with heart-breaking empathy the life of one woman. The tide story, "The Shawl," introduces us to Rosa, the mother of a baby girl hidden within a tattered cloth, and her fourteen- year-old niece, Stella, as they attempt to survive the horrors of life in a Nazi death camp. Cold, exhausted, starving, they live in "a place without pity" where the struggle for the most basic necessities can have terrible consequences. When Stella warms herself with the shawl, she unwittingly begins a chain of events that leads to her infant cousin's death. In the novella, set almost four decades later, Rosa and Stella are refugees in America. Though they left Poland long ago, neither can escape memories of the Holocaust. Stella copes by attempting to forget and build a new life in New York; Rosa cannot. Unable to relinquish the past, Rosa destroys her New York store and moves to a cheap Miami hotel. Adrift in a world without companionship, Rosa relies on financial support from her niece. In spite of her pain, Rosa makes fumbling attempts to tell the story of her suffering, to warn others of man's capacity for unspeakable evil. In Simon Persky — a flirtatious, retired button-maker — Rosa finds a willing listener and perhaps someone who can understand the hurt that can never, and should never, be forgotten. Full of beautiful imagery and finely crafted sentences, The Shawl is a tour de force that portrays not only the characters' grief, guilt, and loneliness but also their hopes and dreams. It's a novel about the importance of remembering, of bearing witness, and of listening to the lessons of history with our ears and our hearts. A destitute woman carries her infant in the Warsaw Ghetto. National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ 3 Major Characters Rosa Lublin As a young woman, Rosa is raped by a German soldier, confined in the Warsaw Ghetto, and sent to a Polish concentration camp with her niece, Stella, and her infant daughter, Magda. Almost four decades later, Rosa lives in Miami, haunted by the memory of her daughters death. "Rosa Lublin, a madwoman and a scavenger, gave up her store — she smashed it up herself — and moved to Miami. It was a mad thing to do. ... Her niece in New York sent her money and she lived among the elderly, in a dark hole, a single room in a 'hotel.'" Stella Teenage Stella's theft of the shawl leads to her cousin Magda's death. As an adult, Stella provides Rosa with financial support, but she cannot understand her aunt's inability to let go of the past. "Stella liked everything from Rosa's junkshop, everything used, old, lacy with other people's history." Magda A baby hidden in her mother's shawl, Magda survives infancy in a Polish concentration camp but is murdered by a guard at fifteen months old. "The face, very round, a pocket mirror of a face: but it was not Rosa's bleak complexion, dark like cholera, it was another kind of face altogether, eyes blue as air, smooth feathers of hair nearly as yellow as the Star sewn into Rosa's coat. You could think she was one of their babies." Simon Persky A retiree whose wife is hospitalized in a mental institution, Simon is a comic character in a tragic situation. His persistent kindness begins to break through some of Rosa's barriers. "Two whole long rows of glinting dentures smiled at her; he was proud to be a flirt." 4 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts Cynthia Ozick (b. 1928) Cynthia Ozick was born in 1928 on the Upper East Side of New York City. Her parents came to America as part of a mass exodus of Russian Jews escaping brutal state-sponsored attacks, or pogroms. Ozicks mother was nine when her family arrived; Ozicks father did not immigrate until he was twenty-one. Facing conscription into the Tsar's army, he fled Russia and used the skills he had acquired through a formal education to open his own pharmacy in New York. By the time Ozick turned two, her father had moved the business and his family to the Pelham Bay area of the Bronx. At five and a half, she entered heder, small classes for religious instruction, but was turned away by a rabbi who did not believe in educating girls. Her maternal grandmother took her back the next day, insisting that the rabbi allow her to study. Though Pelham Bay was a diverse community of immigrants, Ozick was ostracized because of her Judaism. When she attended public grade school, classmates taunted her with religious slurs because she would not sing Christmas carols. She read books from the traveling library that arrived on Friday afternoons. Each child was allowed two books and a magazine. Usually by sunset, Ozick — who knew from early childhood that she would be a writer — had devoured her quota for the week. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF CYNTHIA OZICK Late 1920s 1 1930s Cynthia Ozick is born on April 17, 1928, in New York City. The stock market crashes, beginning the Great Depression, October 29, 1929. Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected president, 1932. Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany, establishes the first concentration camp, Dachau, 1933. Germany invades Poland, starting World War II in Europe, 1939. 1940s Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. Germany and its Axis partners declare war on the U.S. less than one week later. U.S. and British troops land at Normandy, June 6, 1944; the Germans launch a final offensive, the Battle of the Bulge, December 1944. Hitler commits suicide, April 30, 1945. World War II ends. More than 6 million Jews are dead as a result of the Holocaust, 1945. The Nuremberg war crime tribunals begin, November 20, 1945. Ozick graduates from New York University, 1949. National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ 5 The Bronx Traveling Library, c. 1 937 Acceptance to Hunter College High School in New York City, at the time an all-girls school for intellectually gifted students, bolstered her academic self- confidence. She attended New York University, then headed to Ohio State for her masters degree. She married Bernard Hallote in 1952 and, after graduation, moved back to New York. Ozick did not publish her first novel, Trust, until 14 years later. She has since written acclaimed novels, short stories, essays, and literary criticism. Four of her stories have won the coveted O. Henry Prize. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, she was honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters with the Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award and was the first writer to be granted the Rea Award for the Short Story, given ever since to an author whose writing has made a significant contribution in promoting the short story as an art form. She lives in New Rochelle, New York. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF CYNTHIA OZICK 1950s The United States enters a period of sustained prosperity and economic growth. Egypt denies access to the Suez Canal, 1956; Israel then occupies the Gaza strip for four months. Ozick marries Bernard Hallote, 1952. 1960s The Berlin Wall splits the city in two, 1961. John F. Kennedy is assassinated, 1963. In response to Egypt's alliance with Syria, Jordan, and Iraq, Israel launches an attack known as the Six-Day War, 1967. Ozick publishes her first novel, Frwsf, 1966. 1970s Ozick publishes The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories,} 971 ; Bloodshed and Three Novellas, 1976. Eight Palestinian terrorists murder 1 1 Jewish athletes at the Munich Olympics, 1972. Syria and Egypt launch a surprise attack against Israel known as the Yom Kippur or Ramadan war, October 1973. 6 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts « How The Shawl Came to Be Written The Shawl began with a line, one sentence in The Rise and Fall oftheThird Reich by William Shirer.This one sentence told of a real event, about a baby being thrown against an electrified fence. And that stayed with me and stayed with me, and that was the very explicit origin of The Shawl. It began with those very short five pages. We read now and again that a person sits down to write and there's a sense that some mystical hand is guiding you and you're not writing out of yourself. I think reasonably, if you're a rational person, you can't accept that. But I did have the sense — I did this one time in my life — that I was suddenly extraordinarily fluent, and I'm never fluent. I wrote those five pages as if I heard a voice. In a sense, I have no entitlement to this part because it's an experience in a death camp. I was not there. I did not experience it. I wrote the second half because I wanted to know what happened to Rosa afterward. I was curious to enter the mind of such an unhappy, traumatized person and see how that person would cope with the time afterward — rescued, saved, safe, and yet not rescued, not safe, not normal, abnormal. % % — Excerpted from Cynthia Ozick's interview with NEA Chairman, Dana Gioia Pope John Paul II, a native of Poland and witness to the Holocaust, visits Rome's Great Synagogue to help repair the relationship between Catholics and Jews, 1986. Ozick publishes The Sfraw/ in 1989. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is dedicated in Washington, DC, 1993. After filming Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg establishes a nonprofit organization to document the experiences of Holocaust survivors, 1994. Ozick's stage version of The Shawl premieres off-Broadway, 1996. 2000s Ozick publishes her fifth novel, Heir to the Glimmering World, 2004, and her fifth collection of essays, The Din in the Head, 2006. Israel celebrates 60th anniversary, 2007. National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ 7 The Holocaust and World War II The "Holocaust" is the name commonly given to the state- sponsored program of mass murder by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II. The term derives from the Greek words hobs, meaning "completely," and kaustos, a burnt sacrificial offering. Many Jews prefer the Hebrew word "Sho'ah" (which means "catastrophic upheaval" or "calamity"). The Nazi Party, officially named the National Socialist German Workers Party, came to power in 1933 when German President Paul Von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hider Chancellor of Germany After Von Hindenburg died the following year, Hider assumed the powers of the presidency and created a dictatorship. The Nuremberg race laws of 1935 deprived Jews of citizenship under the Third Reich, the name given to the German empire. The racism of the Nazi regime included boycotts of Jewish businesses, as well as legislation limiting the rights of Jews and other targeted groups. Using anti-Semitic propaganda, the Nazi government promoted the idea that Jews converse on a street in the Warsaw Ghetto. Jews were "sub-human" enemies of the German state. The Nazis also declared Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Poles, Russians, those with disabilities, and others, "inferior" for their behavior, ethnicity, or politicals. Based on the ideology of German racial superiority, the Nazi Party began to fulfill Hider's ambition of acquiring more territory in Europe. World War II began September 1, 1939, when German forces invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Canada followed suit 8 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts but, by the end of September, the Polish army lay defeated, the country's land divided between Nazi Germany and their temporary ally, the Soviet Union. Over the next two years Germany defeated and occupied Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Yugoslavia, and Greece. At first, Jews and other Nazi "enemies" were imprisoned in ghettos, transit centers, forced labor camps, and concentration camps. The Nazis used the rail system to transport Jews from their homes all over Europe to these facilities. Many died of exposure, exhaustion, and starvation. By 1941, the Nazis had decided to implement "The Final Solution," the complete extermination of all European Jews. Extermination camps designed for effective mass murder were constructed primarily in Poland, the country with the largest Jewish population. While concentration camps served as labor camps and detention sites, extermination camps were death centers with gas chambers intended to make killing both efficient and impersonal. Victims killed in the The Star of David atop this streetcar designates its route through the Warsaw Ghetto. death camps were usually incinerated in massive ovens constructed to dispose of the bodies, and with them the evidence of the Nazis' elaborate system of genocide. 'When I had my store I used to 'meet the public,' and I wanted to tell everybody — not only our story, but other stories as well. Nobody knew anything.This amazed me, that nobody remembered what happened only a little while ago. They didn't remember because they didn't know." —ROSA LUBLIN in The Shawl National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ 9 An Interview with Cynthia Ozick On August 9, 2007, Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, interviewed Cynthia Ozick in Washington, DC. An excerpt from their conversation follows. Dana Gioia: What were the most important books of your childhood? Cynthia Ozick: My mother would often tease me, "Is it Little Women again?" The Fairy Books were indispensable. I've never gotten over the fairy tales — never. I remember an engraving in one of the Fairy Books of a long avenue with cypress trees. It was so melancholy that it stayed with me forever, so that, whenever today I see a tall angular tree, that same feeling of strange melancholy returns from the fairy tales. DG: Did you always want to be a writer? CO: Always. It was a destiny that I never had any alternative, or wished for any alternative. I simply knew it, always. But I never even thought of myself as a writer until I had published a certain basic body of work because it seemed to me that it was hubris. Who would take me seriously? So if someone asked, "What do you do?", it took me a long time before I could say, "I'm a writer." DG: WTiat is the difference for you between writing fiction and writing criticism? CO: If you're going to write an essay, let's say, about Henry James, you have a subject, and you know something. If you're going to write fiction, you have nothing. You begin in chaos. You may have a smell, a scene, a word, an idea, an emotion. It seems to me that ideas and emotions are inseparable. Emotions may not always be ideas, but ideas are always emotions. In fiction you can come up with something that you never knew you knew. DG: In The Shawl your main character Rosa is Jewish, but she is also very proud of being Polish. What can you tell us about her background? CO: Rosa is a very deeply assimilated Polish Jew. She is so assimilated that her family has had an estrangement from their origins. When I was writing this, I can't say that I consciously knew what I was doing. But from my perspective | THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts now, perhaps unwittingly, I was making a point — from the Nazi point of view, it didn't matter how Jewish or Polish you were. There was no way out. You couldn't point out who was a Jew. If you were completely assimilated, how would anyone know? So a badge had to be manufactured — hence the yellow star — which would point you out so that you could become a victim. What this demonstrates to us is that there were no loopholes. DG: The most brilliandy unexpected thing in The Shawl is Mr. Persky. What would you tell us about this almost comic figure? CO: Mr. Persky as opposed to Rosa gives us an important difference: the differences between immigration and refugee status. An immigrant never wants to go back. He doesn't want to go back. He's come to America for the future, for opportunity, for life, for health, for children, for everything positive. He has left the negative behind. A refugee is full of longing. A refugee wants to go back to the good times. A refugee has never left home. DG: The shawl itself is more than an image. It is the novel's central symbol. How do you see its significance in the book? CO: The shawl is a symbol, and it has many meanings. It suggests terrible danger. It means you will be murdered if you are deprived of it, as Magda was. It also means infinite shelter. It represents the violence of rape, because we are given to understand that Magda is the result of something like an SS brothel. It represents degradation. At the same time — it's so contradictory — it represents life. But actually, what is it? It's an old rag. And so it seems that in despair, we can take an old rag and turn it through imagination into a living child. That's what Rosa does. National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ Ozick and Her Other Works inOi'Y iH f M f .S SI A I hia Ozick I QUA OZICK. " e Din - ***»* ^•"■C^* ^^•s^'*"'* Even as a young girl growing up in the Bronx, Cynthia Ozick knew she wanted to be a writer. An uncle s success as a Yiddish poet inspired her, as did stories told by her maternal grandmother, who lived with the family and often cared for Ozick while her parents spent long hours running their pharmacy. At five Ozick began writing simple poems, by eight she was experimenting with short stories, but not until she was an adult, and a mother herself, did publication and literary acclaim finally arrive. Trust, published in 1 966 — the year after the birth of Ozick's daughter Rachel — is the story of a young woman's epic quest for the elusive father she has never known. Ozick's next three books were story collections and novellas: The Pagan Rabbi (1971), Bloodshed (1976)— which contains "Usurpation," the first of her four O. Henry Award- winning short stories — and Levitation (1982). These books firmly established the themes of Jewish identity that pervade Ozick's fiction. Writing book reviews led to Ozick's first collection of essays, Art and Ardor (1983), the same year her second novel, The Cannibal Galaxy, | 2 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts hit the shelves. Four years later, she published another full-length work of fiction, The Messiah of Stockholm, a tale of intrigue surrounding the paternity of a Jewish book critic who claims he is the son of a Polish writer killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. The novel The Puttermesser Papers (1997) tells the story of Ruth Puttermesser, a smart Jewish working woman in New York City whose life is filled with disappointment. Quarrel and Quandary (2000), a collection of essays, brought Ozick a National Book Critics Circle Award. Ozick's 2004 novel and a Today Show book club selection, Heir to the Glimmering World is the story of Rose Meadows, a young woman who finds employment with a family of German Jews living off the generosity of James A'Bair, the adult son of a famous children's author. In 2006, Ozick published her fifth collection of essays, The Din in the Head. A writer of wit and intelligence, Cynthia Ozick's crystalline prose and beautiful imagery bring to life characters and ideas that remain with the reader long after the book is closed 'What a curiosity it was to hold a pen — nothing but a small pointed stick, after all, oozing its hieroglyphic puddles... An immersion into the living language: all at once this cleanliness, this capacity, this power to make a history, to tell, to explain. To retrieve, to reprieve!' * — from The Shawl If you want to read more about the Holocaust: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (1 947) Night by ElieWiesel (1958) Maus and Maus II by Art Spiegelman ( 1 986; 1 99 1 ) The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi (1988) If you want to read works that have enriched Cynthia Ozick, you might enjoy: Daniel Deronda by George Eliot ( 1 876) The Beast in the Jungle by Henry James (1903) The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad (1910) Ravelstein by Saul Bellow (2000) National Endowment for the Arts 'THE BIG READ | 3 Discussion Questions After witnessing Magda's murder, Rosa shoves the shawl in her mouth to stifle her scream rather than make a sound and risk being shot by the camp guards. What does this scene reveal about Rosa? How does this scene repeat later in the novella? Do you agree with Cynthia Ozick's interpretation: that Stella is "an equal victim with Rosa" and that "Stella has become a ghost or a phantom of all of Rosa's fears and terrible traumatic memories." Why is Rosa so upset when she loses her underwear at the Laundromat? Do you find the situation humorous? Why or why not? Why does Rosa decide to trust Simon Persky? Is his occupation significant to his character? What does Rosa mean when she tells Persky, "Your Warsaw isn't my Warsaw." How are their backgrounds different? How are they similar? 6. How does Stellas life mirror Rosa's? How is it different? What does this suggest about their relationship? 7. What role does Dr. Tree play in the novella? Are there people today who might act like Dr. Tree? Can you sympathize with Rosa's hatred for him? 8. Why does Rosa reject labels like "survivor" and "refugee" in favor of "human being?" 9. What does the shawl symbolize to Rosa? To Magda? To Stella? 10. Discuss some Jewish symbols and imagery in the novella. How might these demonstrate that — even 39 years later — Rosa's thoughts are never far the concentration camp? 11. In your experience, does the book reinforce or shatter stereotypes of Jewish American experience? Why or why not? 12. By telling the story of Magda's death and of Rosa's survival, what does the book reveal about Rosa's personality and her will to live? | 4 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts The Destruction of Warsaw The Old Market in Warsaw, Poland, before (above) and after (below) World War II bombing. National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ | 5 nal Resources Selected Works by Cynthia Ozick Trust — novel, 1966 The Pagan Rabbi — stories, 1971 Art and Ardor — essays, 1983 The Cannibal Galaxy — novel, 1983 The Messiah of Stockholm — novel (1987) Metaphor and Memoiy — essays, 1989 The Shawl — novella, 1989 Fame and Folly — essays, 1996 The Puttermesser Papers — novel, 1997 Quarrel and Quandary — essays, 2000 Heir to the Glimmering World — novel, 2004 The Din in the Head — essays, 2006 Resources about the Holocaust Bachrach, Susan D. Tell Them We Remember: The Story of the Holocaust. Boston: Little, Brown, 1994. "She took a bundle of laundry in a shopping cart and walked to the laundromat. Though it was only ten in the morning, the sun was killing. Florida, why Florida? Because here they were shells like herself, already fried from the sun." — from The Shawl Landau, Elaine. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. New York: Macmillan, 1992. Meltzer, Milton. Never to Forget : The Jews of the Holocaust. New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1977. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum www. ushmm. org (The web site of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum offers educational material, photo archives, interviews with survivors, and more.) | 6 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS 'ti» . .INSTITUTE of , ., .-.'.. MuseurriandLibrary Am MIDWEST The National Endowment for the Arts is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts — both new and established — bringing the arts to all Americans, and providing leadership in arts education. Established by Congress in 1 965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the Endowment is the nation's largest annual hinder of the arts, bringing great art to all 50 states, including rural areas, inner cities, and military bases. The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nations 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The Institute's mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas. The Institute works at the national level and in coordination with state and local organizations to sustain heritage, culture, and knowledge; enhance learning and innovation; and support professional development. Arts Midwest connects people throughout the Midwest and the world to meaningful arts opportunities, sharing creativity, knowledge, and understanding across boundaries. One of six non-profit regional arts organizations in the United States, Arts Midwest's history spans more than 25 years. Additional support for the Big Read has also been provided by the WK. Kellogg Foundation. Works Cited Friedman, Lawrence S. Understanding Cynthia Ozick. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1991. Ozick, Cynthia. The Shawl. 1989. New York Random House, 1990. (The two stories comprising this work, "The Shawl" and "Rosa," were originally published in The New Yorker?) Acknowledgments David Kipen, NEA Director of Literature, National Reading Initiatives Writer: Molly Thomas-Hicks for the National Endowment for the Arts, with a preface by Dana Gioia Series editor: Erika Koss for the National Endowment for the Arts Image editor: Molly Thomas-Hicks with Dan Brady for the National Endowment for the Arts Graphic Design: Fletcher Design, Washington, DC Image Credits Cover Portrait: John Sherffius for the Big Read. Inside Front Coven © Nancy Crampton. Page 1: Caricature of Dana Gioia by John Sherffius. Page 2: Photo from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Instytut Pamieci Narodowej; book cover, courtesy of Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Page 6: © New York Public Library. Page 8: Both images from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, top image courtesy of Charles and Hana Bruml, bottom image courtesy of Rafael Scharf. Page 9: Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Page 11:© Getty images. Page 12: Book covers for The Din in the Head, The Heir to the Glimmering World, and Trust courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company; book covers for The Puttermesser Papers, The Messiah of Stockholm, Quarrel & Quandary, and Metaphor & Memory courtesy of Random House, Inc. Page 15: Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Page 16: © Bettman/Corbis. This publication is published by: National Endowment for the Arts (202) 682-5400 • www.nea.gov 1 100 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W • Washington, DC 20506-0001 www.NEABigRead.org Sept. 2007 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS '■•-a, Museum.„.Library -•-•• SERVICES it was a magic shawl, it could nourish an infant for three days and three nights." -CYNTHIA OZICK from The Shawl The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The NEA presents The Big Read in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with Arts Midwest. A great nation deserves great art.